An extremist, not a fanatic

October 08, 2008

conservatives for revolution

I think he’s a bit like Jeremy Paxman — another of those handsomely remunerated, public-school-educated presenters who believes in most of the things a Tory ought to believe in (the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, riding to hounds, warm beer, Brief Encounter, probably).

But I too believe in these things - especially as Britain‘s Most Evil Man doesn‘t.Indeed, I suspect a reverence for English traditions is more common on the Left than amongst the Conservative Party. Neil Clark’s tastes border on the reactionary; Francis Sedgemore is a Morrisman; you’ll struggle to find a Conservative voter at a meeting of CAMRA or at a Martin Carthy gig. And when Shuggy writes that “our culture seems incapable of expressing disapproval of something unless it can be shown that someone's rights have been violated” he is expressing a conservative view.Many leftists, then, have Tory sentiments. And many Conservatives do not; David Cameron's Desert Island Discs are not those of a conservative. Which raises the point - that the conservative temperament and the Conservative party are two completely different things - indeed, two opposed things.One reason for this is that the pursuit of profit - which Conservatives support - destroys the traditions loved by conservatives. As Marx and Engels said:

Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.

Another reason is that the conservative temperament is sceptical of individuals’ new ideas, and of anyone‘s claim to know better. As Oakeshott put it: “it is beyond human experience to suppose that those who rule are endowed with a superior wisdom.” The conservative prefers the tried and trusted to the new; he prefers to back the field than any particular horse. But bosses reject all this. Their claim to power - in business or in government - is a claim to an especial expertise. And the Conservative party, at least in my lifetime, has been the party of bosses.The conservative temperament gave us mutual building societies, with their local roots and long traditions. The Conservative party gave us the demutualized societies, which blew up spectacularly. The conservative disposition, then, to use Oakeshott’s phrase, is opposed to Conservative politics. Bryan is right: socialism is “certainly not in conflict with true conservatism.”I’d go further. One reason why I have revolutionary sympathies is precisely that I have a conservative disposition. For one thing, in replacing hierarchy with co-ops is one way (the only way?) to assert the wisdom of crowds and the tacit knowledge embodied by professional and craft traditions over the spurious rationalism of managerialist ideology.And for another, institutions - in the long-run - shape character. And the conservative temperament sees much to bemoan in the modern character: the saccharine displays of public emotion; the supine expectation of “leadership” from those above us; the inability to stand on one’s own two feet and face the responsibility of one’s own actions; the demise of virtue and rise of priggish rule-following; the pursuit of external rather than internal goods ; and the demand that we “respect” others’ sensibilities regardless of their imbecility.If such widespread failings of character are to be reversed, we might need radical institutional change. In this sense, revolution and conservatism are compatible.

Comments

"the inability to stand on one’s own two feet and face the responsibility of one’s own actions" - the unfortunate consequence of the welfare state is that it removes one's requirement to even attempt to stand on one's own two feet.

Indeed streamlining the welfare state is in line with both conservative disposition and Conservative policy.

Nick - Danny Finkelstein got it right this morning. Crowds have wisdom when they comprise independent minds. Bubbles, however, emerge when people are not independent, but rather believe things merely because others do - the wisdom of crowds then degenerates into groupthink.
Becauses bosses and "experts" come from similar backgrounds, they are, perhaps, more prone to groupthink than are more dispersed groups.

Morris dancing a conservative tendency? No-one ever told me. I was under the impression that we folkies comprised the revolutionary vanguard of Albion, ready to hang the bankers and Times leader writers with our collective hankies.

Growing up in the eighties, when they were hell bent on wrecking the "post-war consensus" (remember that?) and selling off all the Great British institutions they could find for their scrap value, I always wondered just what, exactly, the Conservative Party was trying to CONSERVE. I never did find anyone who could tell me.

Building Society demutualisation: conservatives would have said "let be", liberals "you have permission to demutualise if you wish" (which is what the Conservatives said) and most Socialists "you are hereby Nationalised". One Socialist subset, the Nazis, would have said "We don't care about your structural facade, just so long as you do what we tell you".

"A lot harder, I think, than trying to cope when one has trust funds, public school education and contacts and inheritances: but oddly, we don't call that "dependency"."

That is true, but this sort of hardship does not necesarily entail passivity and dependency. In fact, it often engenders or encourages the opposite traits. It takes a special kind of system to suppress initiative and independence and our welfare system is just that.

I read a sort of parallel post to this after Hurricane Katrina, about how Republican politics had moved away from the ideal of John Wayne riding into town to help the townsfolk organise themselves against the outlaws (because he was obviously a hero, therefore it was his duty); from this ideal, to modern-day Republicans giving sound-bites about how the victims only had themselves to blame. You just can't picture the Duke doing that.

It's well known what Ian Hislop's preferred political philosophy is, so I'm surprised you attempt to question him.

Was Marx a marxist? Well Engels made a fortune trading on the floor of the Manchester Exchange, so...

...so what are Conservatives trying to conserve?

British Conservatives want to conserve traditional British liberties, but their paradoxic willingness to sacrifice these liberties for power fuels the nostalgic mythology which kills the thing they covet.